Tonight’s movie: Chocolat

The best movies are all about emotion, about evoking an emotional response inside the viewer. Chocolat is all about that. There is a plot, revolving around a chocolate shop in a small French village in 1959, but the movie, nominated for five Academy Awards in 2001, is about pulling happiness straight out of your heart. The beautiful Juliette Binoche stars as the wandering chocolatier, Alfred Molina smolders through his own interior walls as the village count, Judi Dench and Carrie-Ann Moss as a mother and the daughter who can’t forgive her, and, not the least, Johnny Depp as a wandering minstrel. The cinematography by Roger Pratt (Batman, 12 Monkeys, The End of the Affair) is lovely, capturing the wind pushing Binoche, the light at a dinner party, a boat floating on the river. Sophisticated direction by Lasse Hallstrom (My Life as a Dog, Cider House Rules) and script by Robert Nelson Jacobs (Disney’s Dinosaur). A sweet, wonderfil film, watch it.